Royal Games

Old theatrical reviews often used the clichО of feast for the eyes. It was first considered a compliment, then as the times changed, it became almost derogatory. Today, it is just a cliche used with regard to a variety of things. In our case, it is a collection of prints by Kateryna Hutnykova, a young graphic artist from Kyiv.

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Hutnykova’s prints “attract one with a definite literary touch.” Her characters are kings and queens, knights and ladies, pages and buffoons, lions and unicorns, sirens and dragons. One is instantly reminded of the Middle Ages, ballads, legends, and fairy tales. Yet not everything is how it meets the eye. In fact, a thorough quest for literary similitude was carried out and it was found only in one case (in terms of details, rather than as a whole), one literary work which the artist actually read after creating her “George’s Dream,” “The Ark,” “Royal Fountain,” and the excellent “Royal Game.” The book in question is the Austrian novelist Heimito von Doderer’s Last Adventure. The author, mildly speaking, does not rank with the most popular writers, although correctly considered a masterful modern prose writer. Consider an excerpt from the novel: “The duchess had ordered the game stopped and now sat on a semicircular stone bench in the depth of the garden, in the half- shadow created by the hanging garlands of sweet pea. The ladies and gentlemen in attendance were at a distance, on a small square paved with yellow gravel. Brightly-colored balls were scattered all over: red, yellow, blue. Everyone held a basket filled with balls; under the rules of the game, a ball was to be tossed into a basket, and there was a separate color for every game, and no mistaking it! So everyone tried to catch a ball of the right color and duck the wrong one tossed by the rival team...” The setting is vague in time and place (who cares, after all), but the implication is distinctly medieval. Oh, those magical knightly days! Yet every detail is meticulously worked out, invariably colorful and refined.

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Of course, I should have begun with the usual curriculum vitae particulars, but I might as well do it now, the more so that there is nothing sensational. Kateryna Hutnykova was born in Kyiv, studied painting at the Taras Shevchenko Republic Secondary School of Art; in 2000 she graduated from the graphic department of the Ukrainian Art Academy (Prof. A.V.Chebykin’s Free Graphics Studio). That same year she took up a postgraduate course and joined the National Artists’ Union of Ukraine (2000 turned out quite an eventful year). Her works have been displayed since 1997 and she made her name almost instantly.

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She is neither a stage production designer nor a book illustrator. Yet the notion of the theater, performance, and dramatization are among the key elements in her creativeness. With her, the theater is also carnival, even circus (e.g., Frog Circus) staged by Hanusia (modeled by the artist’s little niece), buffoonery (the buffoon is perhaps her most favored character after the king and queen), human relationships (trite as well as refined, with a lot of understatements albeit encoded in symbolic situations and personae). Even the chess pieces played by the king and queen in The Royal Game embody another far more complicated game, far more sophisticated, refined, elegant, and ruthless for the characters and for the artist. A game for the equal.

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Kateryna work out her stories with as much love, care, and virtuosity as the tiniest detail in the costume of every character or a garland on a palatial baluster. Her pictures are not just double or even triple-bottom traps, the more so that all such symbolic tricks eventually lead to a highly sophisticated and at the same time painfully trite “eternal issue” (like man and woman or face and mask). Hutnykova’s whimsical plots are rather like a labyrinth where you turn and turn, but eventually reach the exit. Her George’s Dream can be perceived as a crafty variation on the well- worn theme of a young hero falling asleep, lulled by a song of a dragon (rather a she-dragon). This graphic ballad has a sequel — a variant, to be precise — done by the artist allegedly to pacify all those offended by the “dream..” Here the witty hero plays his magic flute attracting flocks of she-dragons (George’s Song).

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It is very interesting to analyze the laws and rules, moves and countermoves applied by Kateryna Hutnykova in every work. But one ought to remember that they are links in a single chain, stages in one great game the artist is playing with the viewer, perhaps started on that day whenshe first picked up the paintbrush.